Top 5 Fantasy Football Draft Tips

May 28, 2016 by Kurt Turner

Updated for the 2016 fantasy football draft, here's five tips to help you with your fantasy football draft. You likely won't pick up on these until after a couple years of fantasy football, or you can read this and start winning. Drum roll please...

Cheat Sheets: If you don't have accurate projected fantasy points within your customized cheat sheets you'll likely have a horrible draft. Your cheat sheets need to include projected points based on your leagues scoring system, average draft position, scarcity calculations for each player (so you know if you can wait before taking another RB etc), fantasy strength of schedule, average draft position and bye weeks. Naturally ours have that while many other don't!

Don't play Russian Roulette at the QB position: If your league is QB friendly, meaning they score the same (or more) per TD as WR and RB, then you should really make an effort to secure a top 3 QB in the 2nd round. You can grab 2nd tier quarterbacks in the 5th round this year (2014) and if you do this grab another in the 8th or 9th that has high upside. That fact of the matter is there will be a handful of RB and WR that will emerge from mid to late round draft slots that will produce top 20 fantasy stats. The Russian Roulette list of break out candidates at quarterbacks is long, try to get a TOP 5 QB just like a TOP 5 RB. Now there is a caveat, if your league is letting QB's slip and you feel you can get a TOP tier WR etc and still net a TOP tier QB then go for it. It's all about what is happening in your draft. The point is don't play Russian Roulette at the QB position. You want one of the TOP ranked quarterbacks, they're more reliable and predictable year after year. fantasy football draft tips

Hoarding Running Backs: We all have tried to stock pie running backs during the draft, which means we have wasted countless picks on running backs that most likely will not start on your team. Get your primary backs early and get your sleeper late. The simple fact is a couple running backs will emerge in the first four weeks and you need to be a waiver wire hawk and get them, end of story.

Kicker: You should always be the last team to take a kicker. You want an accurate kicker with a good distance leg, in an offense that might have trouble finishing drives. An extra bonus is a late bye week so that you don’t have to drop your starter for a backup kicker until later in the season.

Analyze last years league draft data: If this is your second (or more) year drafting within the same league then by all means review last years data. Look for things like:

Are position runs common? Which position(s)? Have a sleeper list built for this position (and the others just in case) because we humans are creatures of habit, a run will happen again guaranteed. Every year a TE run takes place in my 18 team league, never fails.

Did your fantasy league draft RB sooner than WR or QB, what positions got hit the fastest? This data helps you make logical decisions when you're on the clock trying to decide between a RB or WR.

Observe the positions that fell to the mid to late rounds. Know this value existed the year before and be ready to identify it this year.

About Kurt Turner

Kurt's fantasy advice is featured on USA Today Sports, Bleacher Reports, SiriusXM and Fox Sports. He is the owner of FantasyKnuckleheads.com and has been butchering topics here for over 15 years. Follow him on Twitter